How to Get People to Listen To You Online

Jodi Ettenbergwww.legalnomads.com@legalnomads

How to Get People to Listen To You Online

“How to build an engaged and loyal community using social media – and

why it matters.”

Or…

First: Why does it matter?

• Brand awareness.• Support from the travel or DMO community

and support from readers who are engaged with your content.

• Building organic links and attention for your site by focusing on longtail and not short term.

• A loyal community that cares about *you*.• Engagement that transcends current product

offerings.• Impetus to support you both at home or away.

Engaging people online leads to authenticity in branding

The problem with the “how” part:

With all that noise, how do you stand out?

• Quality > quantity• Stand behind everything you put online• Find articles, news and relevant information

your communities care about.• Share other people’s quality work, not just

your own.

Curation: sharing carefully, to make your social streams an extension of you are as a person, and who you can be as a brand.

A Primary Solution

CU·RAT·ORnoun

/ˈkyo͝orātər/

“The officer in charge of a museum, gallery of art, library, or the like; a keeper, custodian.”

- Oxford English Dictionary

“Latin, from curare to care, from cura care. First Known Use: 1561”

- Merriam Webster Dictionary

“Curators will create an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than just brand created marketing messages.”

- Rohit Barghava, The Content Curation Manifesto.

• Brand awareness for your own blog and business, fostering loyalty by showing you are looking out for your followers, not just yourself or your industry.

• Personal connection to your leads and customers, generating more engagement and interest.

• With credibility comes trust.

Why Curation? Credibility and Influence

• Support your own niches and communities by standing for quality.

• Target users, followers and micro-communities by curating web based on your interests and their needs.

What audience are you trying to reach?

“For me the role of a curator is to find the most interesting things in this massive onslaught of messy

information”

-Rex Sorgatz (@fimoculous)

• Maria Popova (@brainpicker), Brain Pickings

• Tina Roth Eisenberg @SwissMiss, creativemornings.com

• Colin Wright @colinismyname• Dave Pell @davepell, nextdraft.com

Case Studies

Personality comes through and reading choices are education and relevant to a

worldwide audience.

“One digest might make things easier. But two thousand of them can leave people in same state of overwhelmed distress. Ultimately, the goal should be to pick one or two voices that you trust.

People need some kind of algorithm to help them cut through the clutter and I've realized that, for some folks, I am that algorithm.”

Dave Pell, @davepell

• News.me: @newsdotme, news.me• Prismatic: @Prismatic, getprismatic.com• Percolate (@percolate, percolate.com• StrawberryJ.am:@strawberryapp, strawberryj.am• Google Reader• Zite: @zite• Flipboard: @flipboard

Curative Tools

News.me daily summary for September

What if You Don’t Like What Your Curative Summaries Deliver?

First: Cut the Noise

• Use ManageFlitter.com to mass unfollow (up to 1000 people) people with no avatar or who are not active on Twitter.

• SocialBro Chrome extension to unfollow the people who don’t contribute to the conversation (e.g. too active, too niche, etc.)

Next, Find Curators You Trust

• Curative tools described above.• Aggregators for your own niche: newsletters,

curation sites, voices you trust.• FollowerWonk.com to find influencers.• Look at influencers and the lists they’ve curated

or that they follow.• Google Plus finder: www.findpeopleonplus.com

You can hone your content as you search.

Use Analytical Tools to Maximize Reach

• “When to Tweet” services on SocialBro.

• Tweetdeck, Hootsuite: schedule tweets based on when your primary audience is awake

• Facebook Insights: offers demographic efficiency in analysis and targeted ads.

• Bitly for tracking your links based on demographics, clicks and where they come from.

• Tweetreach for specific reach of hashtags.

• What are the emails you send to friends but think “no, I won’t post these to my Twitter feed.”

• Try a test post on Facebook Fan pages once per week to ease in your communities to your new quirky self.

• Ask your colleagues what separates you from the other people in your field.

Then Find Your Own Online Voice

The Golden Rule

If you haven’t read it and loved it, don’t retweet or post it.

(Let your brand be a gatekeeper for quality, so your community trusts that when you post something, you truly believe in it – and they should too.)

• Twitter: Using “via” instead of “RT”• Maximum (seriously, people) one or two

hashtags per tweet.• Pinterest: Source and attribute. Turquoise

resonates. Vertical images count.• Facebook: Alternate your own work with the

work of others, sometimes outside your niche. Tagging other pages no longer notifies.

Other, Non-Golden Rules

• Be sincere and pay attention to grammar.• On all social streams, feature work you care

about.• You want to build a community and become a

source people turn to for information they care about

• Interact with others

Other, Non-Golden Rules, cont’d…

• Social media is not a necessary evil but a chance to show your personality and interests to the wider world.

• Make Twitter and Facebook Fan pages fun again.

• Make your social streams something you can stand behind and take charge of your online communities.

Rethink Your Social Streams

Who knows what this strategy will bring…

A version of these slides will be available at legalnomads.com/curation

Email questions to:[email protected]

Questions? Comments?